Cuba As Seen On A New 'People-To-People' Tour (PHOTOS)
AP | By KATHY WILLENS Posted: 07/06/2012 1:18 pm
HAVANA -- Girls dressed in ruffled layers for a quinceanera. American cars, from the Eisenhower era, in tropical colors. A hand-hewn carousel with peeling paint. Young fans cheering at a baseball game.
These are some of the scenes of everyday life I observed on a recent people-to-people tour of Cuba. These tours allow Americans to travel to Cuba as long as they go with a group licensed by the U.S. government to provide a "full-time schedule of educational activities." (The U.S. government forbids unrestricted travel to Cuba, but in addition to people-to-people tours, travel is permitted for certain other groups, including Americans with relatives there, religious organizations and academics.)
Most people-to-people trips have a themed itinerary like music or food. Some are offered by large travel companies, others by small nonprofits. I joined 21 artists, writers, filmmakers and photographers on a trip organized by a small group from Minnesota that traveled to four cities: Havana, Bayamo, colonial Holguin, and Santiago de Cuba, home of Cuba's historic summer carnival, birthplace of Cuban musical legends and gravesite of national hero Jose Marti.
People-to-people tours are not typical vacations. Structured itineraries include daily meetings with government-sponsored organizations and tours of schools and other institutions. Some meals were in dreary government cafeterias, but we also ate well in paladars, which are intimate restaurants in private homes. You're not supposed to spend the day at the beach the way Canadian and European tourists do, but we did get some free time, and occasionally participants ditched the schedule to explore on their own.
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/06/cuba-as-seen-on-people-to-people_n_1654438.html?utm_hp_ref=travel#slide=1192978
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